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What if Citizens United Actually United the Citizens?
January 22, 2012 | Like this article?

Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The following article first appeared on the Web site of the Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for its email newsletters. After a long, dark period of stagnant progressive momentum and pay-to-play politics, this week saw a flurry of progressive victories that could upset the conventional wisdom about a post– Citizens United world. This week’s announcement by Harry Reid that the Senate is postponing the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) vote would have been almost unimaginable as recently as a week ago, when PIPA and its House counterpart, SOPA (the Stop On-line Piracy Act), were considered done deals. Going into the week, news was dominated by the proliferation of political ads in early primary states, many of which would have been illegal prior to Citizens United.

MEGAUPLOAD IS DOWN!! Due to S.O.P.A (Original Anonymous - Operation Blackout, warning video) - Mindbook. Today In SOPA News: What You Need To Know And How It Might Affect You. Goverments mass tracking. Obama Says So Long SOPA, Killing Controversial Internet Piracy Legislation. PIPA Loses Support With New Senators Opposing. Protect IP, SOPA supporters vow not to give up fight. Internet opponents of a pair of controversial Hollywood-backed copyright bills won a temporary reprieve today, when upcoming votes in the Senate and House of Representatives were postponed .

But the lobbyists and politicians backing the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Protect IP haven't given up. "We must take action to stop" online piracy and counterfeiting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said today. Reid, who previously called the Protect IP bill an "extremely important" piece of legislation, said he believed it could move forward "in the coming weeks.
" (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA and today's Reporter's Roundtable .) Reid's comments came after this week's historic online protest --Wikipedia going dark for a day, alerts appearing on the home page of Google.com and Amazon.com-- roiled Washington officialdom and obliterated long-held assumptions about whether it would be politically safe to advance a measure opposed by millions of Internet users.

Texas Rep.
SOPA Blackout Aims To Block Internet Censorship Bill. Thousands of websites, including some of the most popular, are going dark today to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill which is designed to thwart copyright infringement but that Web experts warn could threaten the functionality of the Internet.

Encyclopedia giant Wikipedia, popular news-sharing site reddit, browser pioneer Mozilla, photo-sharing favorite Twitpic and even ICanHazCheezburger.com are blocking access to content throughout Wednesday, symbolizing what the bill may allow content creators to do to sites they accuse of copyright infringement. Other websites, including Google, are expressing solidarity with the protests by featuring anti-SOPA content on home pages. The online protests are being joined by a physical demonstration in New York City, where thousands of representatives from the city's tech industry plan to demonstrate outside the offices of Sens.

In December, HuffPost reported that Sen. Walt Disney Co. Weigh in on the issue by clicking on the widget below: